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DIPLOMATIC FIASCO. 



THE EEJECTED TREATY FOR ST. THOMAS. 



EDWARD L. PIERCE. 



BOSTON 
1889. 



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A DIPLOMATIC FIASCO. 



Some time ago Scribuer's Magazine contained a paper entitled 
" K Diplomatic Eijisode/' by Miss Olive Risley Seward, which 
undertakes to narrate the negotiations with Denmark for the 
purchase of the islands of St. Thomas and St. John in 1866- 
1869 by Mr. Seward (then Secretary of State), and the con- 
nection of the Senate Committee on Foreign Aifairs (Mr. Sumner 
being chairman) with its consideration and failure of ratification. 
AYitli many words, the introduction of superliuous incidents and 
assertions of facts not verified by reference to sources, she gives an 
air of mystery to what was a jjlain transaction and a very simple 
question. A map is inserted, as if to produce an optical illusion, 
on which a number of straight lines converge to St. Thomas as a 
common centre of islands, continents and commercial marts, just 
as all roads once led to Rome. Among the statesmen of the time 
no one except Mr. Seward thought the island worth having at any 
price, or being taken as a gift for any purpose of peace or war. 
In a foreign Avar it would have been useless for offense and diflfi- 
cult of defense ; and while, during the civil war, when the Con- 
federates held most of our Southern Atlantic coast, one of the An- 
tilles would have served a purjjose as a coaling and supply station, 
it is no part of national duty to make military prejiaration for civil 
war, certainly not a part of ours with the nation consolidated by 
the abolition of slavery. 

Impartial authorities describe St. Thomas as exposed to hurri- 
canes passing once in twenty years over it and doing great dam- 
age ; with very frequent earthquakes coming with serious shocks 
at intervals ; with often recurring droughts ; with no running 
stream and only one small spring, the only resource for fresh 
water being the storing of rain ; its only present productions "a 
few vegetables, a little fruit and some guinea grass," insufficient 



for one-tAA'entieth of its inhabitants; its population "one-tenth 
white, two-thirds black and the remainder mixed ; " its utility 
for commercial purposes dwindling from year to year, and its im- 
ports falling off one-half from 1870 to 1880 ; abandoned as a ren- 
dezvous by the British Mail Company in 1885, with other impor- 
tant lines following its example. From the end of our civil war, 
during which its trade had a temporary stimulus, its descent in 
importance has been constant. ["American Cyclopaedia," "En- 
cyclopaedia Britannica," article "St. Thomas."] This is the 
prize which Mi-. Seward won for us, but which was lost by the 
mysterious indifference and perversity of all the statesmen of his 
time ! Of St. John little need be said here, as scarcely anything 
was said of it during the discussion. In extent it is somewhat 
larger than St. Thomas, but so unattractive and repelling that it 
was "an almost abandoned island" (C. H. Bithome to Mr. Sew- 
ard, May 13, 18G7). Providence, as if to save us from a Avild 
venture, gave in the midst of the negotiations a triple warning by 
an earthquake, a tidal wave, and a hurricane, in quick succession. 

Ours, too, is a country of the temperate zone, and the aspira- 
tions of its people are continental. There has been among us a 
healthy resistance to going further southward than we have now 
reached, or seeking islands either in the Atlantic or the Pacific ; 
an instinctive reluctance, as shown in the later case of St. Do- 
mingo, to enter on a career of tropical extension, with dangers and 
embarrassments to free institutions which could not be measured 
in advance. 

It is not difficult, since the recent astouuding revelations of 
Mr. Lincoln's biographers, to comprehend the wildness with which 
Mr. Seward entered on this extra-territorial scheme. It now appears 
that he was hardly warm in his seat as Secretary, Avhen, with a civil 
conflict of tremendous import at hand, he proposed to the President 
to rush madly into a war with France and Spain, and nominated 
himself for dictator ! The patriot of to-day cannot value too 
highly the wise instinct of the American people which at Chicago 
in 1860 preferred Lincoln to Seward. It is now apparent why 
the good President, though he kept his own counsel, leaned after- 
wards rather on Mr. Sumner than on his Secretary when foreign 
questions were pending. The admii-ers of Mr. Seward have a new 
task of apology and defense quite enough to exhaust their in- 
genuity. 



The underlying thought of "^ A Diplomatic Episode" is that 
the Senate of the United States in withholding assent to Mr. Sew- 
. ard's negotiation put our country in the position of acting in bad 
faith to Denmark. This contention has no basis in fact, or po- 
litical ethics. The Constitution of the United States, of which 
all the world in doing business with us must take notice, confers 
on the President " power by and with the advice and consent of 
the Senate to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators 
present concur." It confides this great power, an incident of 
sovereignty, to the President and Senate, each acting with an inde- 
pendent responsibility and discretion, neither having the right to 
abdicate in favor of the other. This discretion of the Senate has 
been freely exercised in dealing with strong as well as with weak 
nations ; for instance, in the rejection of the Johnson-Clarendon 
treaty on the one hand, and of the St. Domingo treaty on the 
other. All publicists are agreed, among our own the authors of 
the Federalist, as well as Story and Wheaton, that treaties bind 
neither party in law or in honor, until finally ratified by all the 
bodies in which the authority is placed by the constitution of the 
State. 

Whence comes this gloss on the Constitution that the treaty- 
consummating power is now wholly lodged in the Executive, and 
that the Senate has lost its constitutional right of withholding its 
advice and consent ? If this notion were to prevail some future 
Secretary, head of a bureau not established by the Constitution, 
swaying some future Andrew Johnson, might carry our dominion 
into Mexico, to the Isthmus, to the Amazon, even to Cape Horn, 
to say nothing ot countless islands ; and the Senate, representing 
sixty millions of people, would have to stand aloof in amazement, 
shorn of all power to arrest the madness I Aside from its merits, 
the fate of the St. Thomas treaty was of great advantage, in that 
it established against a monstrous assumption of one-man power 
the prerogative of the Senate to act on all treaties with absolute 
freedom of judgment, unhampered by executive initiation and 
pledges. 

The purchase of Alaska from Eussia is not analogous to the 
attempt to acquire St. Thomas. In the one case the territory was 
continental, in the other extra-continental and insular ; in the one 
case lying to the north, in the other tropical ; the one bringing 
wealth in fisheries and furs and fair climatic conditions, while the 



other was without resources actual or undeveloped, and even sub- 
ject to derangements of nature unparalleled within the same limited 
space ; the one checkmating the colonial empire of Great Britain 
in tlie northwest, and opening the way to the dominion of the 
continent which has been the thought of far-seeing statesmen 
like Sumner and Cobden, while the other was to bring to us two 
worthless islands of the size of a county, two of the thousand in 
the Caribbean Sea, with a waste of money in peace and complica- 
tions in war. Alaska exceeded half a million square miles and 
the price was .$7,300,000, while the bargain with Denmark called 
for 17,500,000 for a meagre area of only seventy-five square 
miles. 

It is true that Mr. Sumner added to his main argument for 
Alaska, made April 9, 1867, the consideration that 'Uhe dishonor- 
ing of the treaty," as he called it, at that stage would involve a 
serious responsibility. But he was very careful to confine this 
ohiter dictum to tho case in hand ; and Miss Sewarcl, very deftly, 
as well as abruptly, cuts short her quotation from his speech when 
Ghe reaches his emphatic exclusion of all other treaties from any 
implied sanction. He went on to say that " had the Senate been 
consulted in advance before the treaty was signed or either pow- 
er publicly committed, as is of lea done on important occasions* 
it (the Senate) would be under less constraint," a clear intima- 
tion that this should be the practice in such cases. And then, to 
make his caveat emphatic, he said, " Let me add that, while for- 
bearing objection now, I hope that this treaty may not be drawn into 
a precedent, at least in the independent manner of its negotia- 
tion. I would save to the Senate an important power justly be- 
longing to it ;" and, he added, " this treaty must not be a prece- 
dent for a system of indiscriminate and costly annexion." He 
also expressed his anxiety that our expansion should come from 
natural processes, without war and even without purchase, the 
latter to be justified only under jDeculiar circumstances. Mr. 
Sumner in this caveat gave Mr. Seward and the Danish negotiator 
timely warning as to the determination of the Senate to hold fast 
to its constitutional prerogative, which they had no excuse not to 

* Mr. Seward submitted in 1863, in advance, the draught of a convention 
with Mexico for the assumption in part of her debt, and, the Senate advisin- 
against it, the negotiation went no further. " 



5 

keep in mind the following October when they made their defi- 
nite arrangement. 

No one knew this constitutional limitation better than General 
Raasloff, the jsrincipal negotiator on the Danish side. He had 
lived among us almost as a citizen when engaged in engineering 
enterprises ; and he had already represented his country in the 
United States as Consul General and Minister. He wrote our 
language without foreign idiom and spoke it almost without foreign 
accent. He knew our polity as well as we know it ourselves. 
Indeed, unlike the case of Russia, where the Czar holds the power 
absolutely and exclusively without hindrance from any one, the 
Constitution of Denmark contained a limitation analogous to that 
of our own, making the treaty-consummating power dependent 
on the decision of the Rigsdag. The treaty was itself explici-, 
reserving, as conditions, ratification by our Senate and by the 
Danish Rigsdag, and also by the islanders themselves. Rejection 
by any one of the three would have involved no breach of faith. 

It was natural that the Danish negotiator, whose personal 
pride as well as whose party interests were at stake, should make 
the point of good faith ; but he labored hard in insisting upon it 
when pressed before the Committee on Foreign Affairs by Mr. 
Fesseuden's question, ** Would, in your opinion, the United 
States have a right to complain if your Rigsdag had refused their 
consent to the ratification of the St. Thomas treaty ? " His an- 
swer was that in that event the Rigsdag would have been dis- 
solved, and a new election ordered ; and then, if the new Rigs- 
dag followed the action of its predecessor, the Cabinet itself 
would have resigned. And this was all the satisfaction he could 
suggest as possible ; clearly none for a nation disappointed in a 
bargain, and insisting on a point of good faith. He thought, 
too, that we should still have had the right to complain that his 
government had trifled with us " in having neglected to secure 
beforehand the ratification of the treaty," — an intimation that 
Mr. Seward should have made himself surer of his footing, and 
have consulted the Senate in advance, as pointed out to be the 
proper course by Mr. Sumner in his speech on the Alaska pur- 
chase. 

Whatever color of Justice there may have been in Denmark's 
point of good faith came from Mr. Seward's unauthorized as- 
surances that the enterprise was sure of approval in the Senate ; 



and according to the A^ashington correspondence at the time, the 
Committee on Foreign Affairs at their hearing January 28, 1869, 
thought them to be "an egregious blunder" when General 
Eaasloff made them the basis of his appeal. Mr. Seward said to 
the Danish negotiator, June 28, 1866. that " the Executive could 
always count upon the assistance of Congress in matters of this 
kind provided the proceedings had been correct ;" and in other 
communications gave the Danish Government to understand that 
there need be no fear as to the ratification. Arguments in news- 
papers and iDamphlets at the time put the case for ratification 
chiefly on tlie ground that Mr. Seward had committed us to the 
treaty by his ill-considered and precipitate action. Eaasloff's 
intimate friends laid the blame of his misfortunes on Mr. Seward. 
Mr. G. V. Fox, writing to Mr. Sumner, January 31, 1869, concerning 
General Raasloff's appeal for his good offices to assist the treaty, 
suggested that the Foreign Affairs' Committee invite his ojjinion, 
and said, " This course seems to me the only one which enables 
me to satisfy my friend, General Eaasloff, that I have attempted 
to aid him in the most unpleasant position in which Mr. Seward's 
diplomacy has placed him. I can see that there is no iMssibility 
of success for him, and that the rejection is fatal to his future in 
his own country." Eaasloff himself, writing to Mr. Sumner 
January 12, 1869, and referring to the effect of the rejection on 
his own career, speaks of himself as " having been more than 
anybody else (Mr. Seward, of course, excepted) instrumental in 
bringing such a calamity and humiliation upon my country." 
The parenthesis, which is his own, is significant. 

The writer of the " Episode " insinuates that prejudice against 
Seward as well as Johnson accounts for the want of welcome 
which awaited the St. Thomas treaty in the Senate. It is un- 
necessary to resort to this theory, for the objections against the 
treaty would have been equally fatal if it had been negotiated by 
a Secretary and a President who were retaining the confidence of 
the country. It is true that Mr. Seward had been ''swinging 
around the circle" with Mr. Johnson. He is understood also to 
have been the originator of that fatal policy of the President 
which revived the rebel spirit, disorganized the whole Southern 
country, led to barbarous legislation against the colored race, 
eventuated in riots, massacres and Ku-Klux raids, and postponed 
for a decade the pacification of the restored States ; consequences 



which in charity we must believe he was not wise enough to fore- 
see. He avowed himself openly its supporter, and historical 
writers declare him to have been its author. The general dis- 
favor into which he fell may have had something to do with pro- 
ducing the popular distrust of the Johnson-Clarendon negotia- 
tion; but it does not appear to have affected the convention with 
Denmark. One thing is certain, that Mr. Sumner at no time pre- 
judged Mr. Seward's diplomatic enterprises; but uniformly came 
to their consideration with an open mind. They had parted 
politically, but the spell of an old friendship and common mem- 
ories was still on Mr. Sumner, probabh' also on Mr. Seward. 
Together they had fought the good fight of " the irrepressible 
conflict." They had long enjoyed intimate fellowship in the Sen- 
ate, never broken by antagonism or weakened by rivalry. They 
had sat often at each other's table, and these household recogni- 
tions continued to the end of Mr. Seward's service in Washington. 
Mr. Sumner had been at least once a guest at Auburn, where 
another than Mr. Seward regarded him with almost motherly af- 
fection, addressing him even by his Christian name. There had 
been full sympathy between them in personal trials and sufferings, 
and in bereavements, and also when each at different times was pros- 
trated by the assassin. Each had a fascination in manner and 
spirit which the other felt ; and who, with large sympathies with 
his kind, that has known either has not felt the same ? On a day 
in June, 1860, shortly after his loss of the nomination for Presi- 
dent. I dined at Mr. Seward's house in Washington, with Sum- 
ner and Adams as the only other guests ; and it was difficult to 
keep back the tears as our host with profound disappointment 
but in no unmanly way spoke of what had recently passed at Chi- 
cago. Between Mr. Seward and Mr. Sumner there were differences 
in the treatment of public questions, sometimes temporary chafing 
and soreness, particularly during Mr. Lincoln's administration, 
when the President gave heed on important questions of foreign 
policy to the Senator rather than to Mr. Seward, as with reference 
to the issuing of letters of marque and reprisal, so that the latter 
said impatiently, "there are too many Secretaries of State." But 
never was Mr. Sumner inhospitable to Mr. Seward's plans or wishes, 
even after the contest between Congress and President Johnson 
had begun. As soon as Mr. Seward had negotiated the treaty 
for Alaska, a few hours before it was signed, he sent for Mr. Sum- 



8 

ner, March 29, 1867, to come to his house the same evening to 
confer with him and the Russian minister concerning it. With 
what vigor Mr. Sumner sustained that treaty is a part of history. 
When shortly after its ratification I asked him how he came to 
take so much interest in it, and to prepare so laborious a speech 
in its defense, he stated several reasons of a public nature ; but 
first in order of time he gave Mr. Seward's earnest desire to carry 
it through. 

Mr. Sumner recognized always the duty of co-operating cor- 
dially with public officers with whom he might not at the time be 
in political sympathy. He continued during Johnson's adminis- 
tration to call often at the State Department when Mr. Seward 
was Secretary, and to keep himself informed as to its business and 
needs, and in debates, even during the heats of the impeachment 
controversy, contended so vigorously for Mr. Seward's recommen- 
dations as to clerical force and the contingent or secret service 
fund as to invite the suggestion from some associates that 
he was too much the partisan of that department. Any one 
curious in such matters may verify this statement by consulting 
the Congressional Globe's reports for January 30 and 31, February 
4 and 7, and June 23 and 23, 1868. 

The "Episode" makes and reiterates against the Senate the 
charge of delay in acting on the St. Tliomas treaty, a charge which 
lies against the negotiators rather than the Senate. More than three 
years passed between January 1, 1865, when Mr. Seward opened 
up the subject of the purchase to General Eaasloff at Washington 
and the time when the treaty and necessary papers were rine for 
the consideration of the Senate. The intervening period was 
occupied with inaction on both sides, principally the Danish ; 
more or less skirmishing between the parties as to the government 
from which the first offer of amount should come ; prolonged 
silence and inattention of the cabinet at Copenhagen after Mr. 
Seward's first offer, which our minister at that court Avas unable to 
break [Mr. Yeaman's letters to Mr. Seward, January 21. March 13 
April 27 and 30, and May 2, 1867]; finally, instead of an accept' 
ance of Mr. Seward's offers one counter proposition and then 
another ; the Danish minister at Washington going home and 
leaving no successor ; the insistence of Denmark after the 
pnce had been fixed on a vote of the islanders, which, in 
view of what they were, could be of no significance, and 



9 

which involved vexatious questions and postponements, so that 
the treaty was not signed till October 24, 180 7, and not sub- 
mitted to the Senate till December, and the vote of the island- 
ers was not communicated till January 17, 1868, Although 
in December, 1867, when the treaty was referred, Mr. Sum- 
ner promptly requested the papers from the State Depart- 
ment, they were not forthcoming for seven Aveeks, and Avhen 
they had been printed and were available for use, the time 
fixed by the treaty for ratification, February Ji4, 1868, had 
expired, and an extension of time became necessary. So sluggish 
were the Danes in the Avhole business that our Minister, Mr. Yea- 
man, could not control his inijjatience, and wrote of the national 
characteristic, ''In everything, from cobbler to king, they are the 
most deliberate and leisurely people in the world." In the pur- 
chase of Alaska, on the other hand, between the first broaching 
by the Russian Minister and the final signature there was less than 
a six months' interval. 

No one saw more clearly than Mr. Seward the peril to which 
the delay at Copenhagen exposed the treaty. Its only chance of 
approval in this country grew out of the peculiar exigencies of a 
civil war, when a long southern coast was held by the insurgents, 
and that period was receding. Military considerations were di- 
minishing in force, and ambition for territory was not the passion 
of the hour. Every day, too, the administration, of which Mr. 
Seward was the inspiring leader, was losing the confidence of the 
country. He telegraphed January 19, 1867, to Mr, Yeaman, 
" Tell Raasloff, haste important," In a letter to Mr, Yeaman, 
August 7, 1867, he urged on the Danish government " prompt- 
ness in the pending negotiation as essential to success;" and in let- 
ters September 23 and September 28, a month before the conven- 
tion was signed, he emphasized the hazard to whicli the procras- 
tination at Copenhagen had exposed the whole business, as 
in the meantime the people of the couutry had lost interest 
in the acquisition of a naval station in the West Indies and 
were turning their attention to other and cheaper projects. 
He wrote: "The desire for the acquisition of foreign territory 
has sensibly abated. The delays which have attended the negoti- 
ation, notwithstanding our urgency, have contributed to still 
further alleviate the national desire for enlargement of territory. 
In short, we have already come to value dollars more and do- 



10 

minion less." It was evident that Mr. Seward before the treaty 
was submitted to the Senate, and even before the convention was 
signed, had lost faith that it would be ratified, not because of any 
peculiar adverse influences in that body, but because the Amer- 
ican people had become unfriendly to such a purchase. It was a 
dead treaty when Mr. Seward handed it to the Senate, as he well 
knew at the time. This appears from his letters to Mr. Yeaman, 
as well as from his letter to Mr. Sumner, November 9, 1868, 
when replying to the hitter's inquiry as to another matter, he 
wrote : " It is true on the contrary that instructed by the de- 
bates of Congress and the tone of the jDublic press during the 
past year, I have declined all recent suggestions in regard to the 
acquisition of naval stations anywhere in the West Indies, espe- 
cially the mole of St. Nicholas."'* 

The author of the "Episode" suggests foreign influence at 
Washington operating against the treaty. This, of which she 
gives no proof, is the creation of her imagination. When, where, 
and on whom was it exercised ? Was Mr. Seward approached in 
that way, and does this account for his losing heart in the pro- 
ject ? Was Fessenden bought up by some German lobbyist ? 
Did British gold find its way into Cameron's pockets ? How were 
Morton, Patterson, Harlan, Casserly, and Sumner taken care of ? 
One, without recurring to Horace {Nee deus inter)<it, etc.), ought 
to be wiser than to resort to such an unnatural explanation. 

The Danish negotiator in his letters to Mr. Sumner and in his 
speech at Copenhagen named as his only difficulties " the prevail- 
ing ignorance of facts " (which he hoped to remove by proof of the 
value of the islands as a naval station), and the contest between 
the President and Congress ; but he gave no hint of foreign influ- 
ence. In fact the only influence of this kind exerted at Washing- 
ton was in favor of the treaty — through the attractive qualities of 
General Raasloff whom all wished if possible to serve, and the re- 
fined hospitality which he freely dispensed. Besides, he ai'gued his 
case on two different days before the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions, and did what he could to affect public opinion. He called 
to his service as counsel to enlighten senators, a gentleman who 

*The House resolution against further purchases of territory, passed Novem- 
ber 25, 1867, by a vote of 93 to 43, was, as exnliinel by the speeche? of its 
mover, C. C. Washbura, November 25 aad December 11, intended as a protest 
against the purchase of St Thomas. 



11 

combined social favor with professional accomplishments. He 
emplo3'ecl an able and well-known writer to prepare a pamphlet ar- 
gument in favor of ratification, and supplied him with documents 
concerning the treaty which had been printed by the Senate as con- 
fidential, and he sent this pamphlet to senators and to the leading 
journals of the countr}-, in which it was reviewed. Articles in 
favor of the ratification appeared in Paris contemporaneously in 
the Moniteur and Pays, which indicated a prompting from the 
same source. It is safe to say that a pressure of such various kinds 
by a foreign power to carry a treaty in the Senate is without 
precedent. 

The paper under consideration seems to attribute to Mr. 
Sumner altogether the failure of the treaty in the Foreign 
Affairs Committee, fcr the reason that he was " almost implicitly 
followed by it." He had indeed with the committee the weight 
which comes from a conibination of perfect integrity, sound 
judgment, large experience and technical knowledge ; but the 
other members, Fessenden, Cameron, Harlan, Morton, Patterson 
and Casserly, were not men naturally of his type, none of them 
anti-slavery leaders like himself, every one of them at times 
strongly differing from him. Mr. Fessenden was antipathetic to 
him, and disposed to be critical of what he did. If Mr. Sumner 
was unfair, if he did aught unbecoming a Senator, there were sharp 
eyes to follow him. Mr. Fessenden, it may be remarked, was the 
member most demonstrative against the St. Thomas treaty, and 
he Avas one of the only two Senators who voted against the 
Alaska purchase. Clearly Mr. Sumner's " over-mastering advo- 
cacy" in favor of this last treaty did not influence the Senator 
from Maine ; and the latter's resistance to the St. Thomas project 
came equally from his independent volition. 

There are insinuations in Miss Seward's paper which are un- 
worthy of any kinswoman of the distinguished statesman whoso 
name she bears, and which he, if living, would be the first to re- 
buke. In three passages, at least, she imputes to Mr. Sumner 
an unworthy and deceptive silence, and a hypocritical purpose to 
mislead General Raasloff and give him false hopes of a ratifica- 
tion of the treaty. In all this, as well as in the other charge of 
"smothering" the treaty (''secretly and silently done," she 
says), there is no truth. Happily, the amplest record evidence is 
at hand to disprove them. As many as twenty-five letters or 



12 

notes from General Raasloff to Mr. Sumner, from December, 
18G8, to May, 1809, the period during most of which he was at 
Washington urging the ratification, are preserved, and are in my 
hands. 

The purchase of St. Thomas did not attract Mr. Sumner, but 
he kept an open miud concerning it, and as far as possible held 
his Judgment in suspense. He had a regard for Denmark as a 
nation and a particuLir friendship for Raasloff, and sought to give 
every opportunity to him to prove the value of the acquisition. 
He arranged for Kaasloff jiersonal interviews with his colleagues, 
and what was quite exceptional, if not unprecedented, formal au- 
diences with the committee January 26 and January 28, 1869 ; 
obtained documents for him which he sought in order to remove 
objections to the purchase, distributed pamphlet arguments for 
the treaty among the members of the committee which Raasloff 
supplied, and intervened at his request to obtain the opinion of 
Mr. G. V. Fox, which was knowu to be in favor of the purchase. 
He was the one member of the committee to whom Raasloff ap- 
plied freely for good offices, which were uniformly granted. 
Nevertheless, he was never converted to the treaty. RaaslofFs 
surviving friend, General Christensen, says that he frequently 
spoke of Mr. Sumner's connection with it, "always regretting 
that he could not win the sympathy of that statesman for the 
transaction." 

The committee suspended action, but this was in order that 
Mr. Seward and Riiasloff should have the fullest opportunity to 
complete all proofs and supply all considerations in favor of the 
purchase. Mr. Seward never called for a decisive vote ; and both 
he and General Raasloff knew that there was no time when the 
treaty would have been carried ; and they thought with diminish- 
ing hope that there might be a favorable turn. It was a ratifying 
vote which they desired, not a vote with the certainty of a re- 
jection. The non-action of the Senate was at Raasloff's express 
instance, as proved by a contemporaneous record. Mr. Fish wrote 
to Mr. Sumner, March 28, 1869, a note containing only these 
words : " Dear Summer : Raasloff does not wish any action on 
his treaty. He will probably see you. H. F." 

The imputation of sinister silence on Mr. Sumner's part is ef- 
fectually disproved by General Raasloff's contemporaneous letters. 
In December, 1868, probably late in the month, he arrived in 



13 

Washington with a view to press the treaty. At once he began to 
send Mr. Sumner notes and letters about the treaty, as well as 
congratulations on Xew Year's day and invitations to dine ; and 
they were meeting from day to day. On the evening of January 
11; 1869. Mr. Sumner told him frankly that there was little or no 
chance of his success with the committee and the Senate, and 
sympathizing with him in the probable effect of his failure on his 
position at home, said: " I am sorry for you; you are in a tight place, 
etc.," words which were repeated by Raasloff in a note the next 
morning, and which lie said had kept him awake a good portion of 
the night. In the same note and in another written a few days later, 
he said that he was fully prepared for the worst, and had all along 
been prepared for it. He felt, however, constrained to push his 
case, and went before the committe on the 26th and 28th of the 
same month, and otherwise did all he could to save it, but in vain. 
At the last of March he left "Washington, never to return. Just 
before his departure Mr. Sumner gave him the portrait of Thor- 
waldsen, which he acknowledged March 28, 1869, saying " it 
would be very dear to him as a souvenir (Vamitie." The gift was 
made after Mr. Sumner had forewarned Raasloff of the doom of 
the treaty, and had, neither in the mind of giver or receiver, as 
Miss Seward sets up, any import of favorable action upon it. 
Raasloff wrote from Copenhagen May 19, " Let me thank you 
once more for the beautiful portrait of Thorivaldsen. It is much 
admired both on account of the historical interest attaching to it, 
and as a work of art. I hope I may be allowed to keep it." He 
had gone from our country not to return, but his thought of Mr. 
Sumner was as affectionate as ever. 

An authentic statement of General Raasloff's ajDpreciation of 
Mr. Sumner's relations with himself and of the Senator's conduct 
concerning the treaty ajjpeared in the General's speech made at 
Copenhagen after his return, when all active jDressure for the 
ratification had finally ended. The occasion was a celebration of 
the amalgamation of some telegraph lines. Writing to Mr. Sum- 
ner May 19, 1869, a few days after the speech in which he had 
mentioned the treaty and Mr. Sumner personally, he said : "I 
felt very much tempted to say more about you than I did, but I 
know you shrink from ovations and public compliments, all of 
which, however, you cannot expect to escajje. I did not say, as 
the telegraph (I am told) has it, that you were in favor of ratify- 



14 

ing the St. Thomas treaty; but I said that you had done more 
than anybody else to save the treaty from an untimely death." 
Here is a testimony from the person who was most interested and 
best informed as to Mr. Sumner's course which assigns to him 
more effective aid than any given by any one, inchiding Mr. 
Seward himself, "to save the treaty from an untimely death;" 
testimony directly in the teeth of Miss Seward's intimation of 
sinister silence, double dealing and suppression. 

No other and contrary statements, it is presumed, were ever 
made by him ; for if made, they would show him to be other 
thau the honest and truthful man he was believed to be. The 
General, as still further showing his absolute confidence in Mr. 
Sumner, bespoke his friendly intervention in the embarrassed 
relations between Prussia and Denmark, and said : " I find to 
my great regret that we are not making any progress in our rela- 
tions with Prussia; and I wish you would lend a hand in bring- 
ing about a really good understanding and sincere neighborly 
relations between us and the North German Confederacy. We (I 
mean my colleagues and myself) are anxious for it, but every time 
we make an overture or an approach we are repulsed in such a 
manner as to make it almost impossible with self-respect to make 

new attempts I really know no other man in the 

world who could as well as you, being the friend of both, help us 
out of this unsatisfactory state of things, and thereby remove one 
of the existing causes of war." A European who could solicit in 
such terms the friendly intervention of an American citizen in 
the relations between his own and another kingdom must have 
held in remarkable confidence and esteem the foreigner to whom 
he applied. 

Miss Seward deals disingenuously with this speech. She cites 
it as made in June, 1869, in the Eigsdag, whereas it was made 
May 13, at the banquet ; but exact time and place are unimpor- 
tant, except as bearing on her method of dealing with facts. She 
quotes three sentences from the speech, and at the end of the first 
one there are stars, indicating an omission. The next sentence 
was the following, at which she was careful to stop. '' It must, 
however," continued General Raasloff, "not be forgotten that the 
treaty has not been rejected ; its ratification has only been post- 
poned, and that it is so is owing to the stand taken by some few 
wise statesmen, foremost among whom is my friend, the Hon. 



15 

Charles Sumner, one of the most prominent and experienced 
statesmen of the age,, for many years the leader of the Senate in 
regard to foreign relations, and a man who never loses sight of 
the regard and consideraiion due from one friendly nation to 
another." 

Miss Seward might well omit this sentence, as it spoils entirely 
her theory. The omission of Mr. Seward's name from the speech 
is significant. He had led the Danish negotiator into a pitfall, 
and his name therefore received no grateful mention. Eaaslolf' s 
career as a public man ended Avith his diplomatic failure, and with 
the fall of his ministry as the consequence; and leaving his coun- 
try he passed the rest of his life abroad, chiefly in Paris, and died 
in the suburb of Passy, February 14, 1883, at the age of sixty- 
seven. He Avas in New York in May, 1872, but he had become 
soured by disappointment, and kept aloof from Washington. 

Within a month before General Raasloff left AVashington in 
1869, there was a new President, General Grant, and a new Secre- 
tary of State, Mr. Fish, neither of whom showed favor to the treaty, 
the former dismissing it summarily as " a scheme of Seward's and 
he would have nothing to do with it;" and the latter sending Mr. 
Sumner notes which indicated an adverse leaning. As appears by 
one bearing date October 8, 1869, Mr. Fish jDeremptorily refused, at 
the urgent request of De Bille, the new Danish minister, to ask for 
another extension of time for the ratification, leaving De Bille to 
ask for it, and took pains to guard against any expression in favor 
of its ratification. A few months later, January 28, 1870, he 
transmitted to Mr. Sumner, for use at his discretion, a letter from 
R. C. Kirk, Minister Resident at Buenos Ayres, dated December 
13, 1869, who, in an account of a recent visit, described St. 
Thomas as " one of the most God-forsaken islands;" *' the great 
majority of its inhabitants filthy-looking negroes," subject to 
earthquakes, one of which occurred on the morning of his arrival, 
and the island itself as "not desirable even as a gift." 

Miss Seward uudertakes to give matters of record concerning 
the treaty which at the time she wrote were under the seal of se- 
crecy. But upon the removal of the injunction. January 5, 1888, 
on Mr. Hoar's motion, it was found that Mr. Sumner did not, as 
she states, indorse "the one word, ' adversely,' on the treaty," 
and that neither he nor any one indorsed that or any other words 
upon it, it being absolutely free from any notes whatever. Even. 



1(3 

the wrapper contains only a memorandum of the reference to the 
committee. The words "suspension of action " which she puts 
in quotation marks as Mr. Sumner's recommendation, are her 
words, not Mr. Sumner's or the committee's. 

The committee took delinite action at the time General 
Raasloff left Washington finally. It laid the treaty on the table 
March 30, 1869, and recorded on its minutes the words, " the 
understanding being that this was equivalent to rejection and 
was a gentler method of effecting it." For his sake it held back 
its report for a year, and then cleared its docket. By the official 
transcript from the record, it appears that on March 24, 1870, 
Mr. Sumner reported the treaty ''with the recommendation that 
the Senate do not advise and consent to the ratification of the 
same," with a similar report on the proposed extension of time. 
Miss Seward's fidelity to facts will be understood on recurring to 
her article, where she says that "the matter was never brought 
before the Senate and may be said to have been smothered in 
committee !" The record, as now open to the public, it may be 
added, shows Mr. Sumner's faithful attention to the business in 
repeated motions for references of documents. 

Of the Committee on Foreign Affairs to which the St. Thomas 
treaty was referred, Cameron ' of Pennsylvania, Patterson of New 
Hampshire, and Harlan of Iowa, alone survive. Their testimony 
has been requested, and after a reading of Miss Seward's " Epi- 
sode," is cordially given. It should be read in the light of her 
■charges and insinuations of "smothering " and dishonorable reti- 
ceiice, and her assumjjtion that the argument for the acquisition 
was so self-evident and conclusive that it became "morally impos- 
sible to report openly against it," and that neither the Committee 
nor any Senator "could assign a reason for an adverse report." 
This is not the first time that an advocate sorely pressed finds it 
easier to assume than to argue. 

Mr. Cameron writes: "The rejection of the treaty was quite 
a, simple matter; there was no mystery about it. No person on 
the Foreign Affairs Committee was in favor of the treaty. The 
case of Alaska was very different, in which one of the chief mo- 
tives was to show our regard for Eussia for the part she had 
taken during the war, and to strengthen the northwestern pos- 
sessions. The St Thomas purchase made no impression upon 
the committee or upon the public either. The smothered at- 

' Mr. (;aiiu'i-(iii lias since died. 



17 

tack upon Mr. Sumner in this [Miss Seward's] article is most un- 
just." 

^.[r. Patterson writes: ''I have read the article by Miss Seward 
with a good deal of interest and more surprise. The Senate, 
generally, I believe, regarded the treaty for the purchase of St. 
John and St. Thomas about as General Grant did, as one of 
Seward's schemes, and determined to have nothing to do with it. 
Some denied the constitutionality and more rejected the policy of 
entering upon a svstem of annexing non-contiguous territory and 
outlying islands to the United States." He states that the vote 
of the islanders was regarded by senators as a mere farce, and that 
not being fit for self-government, how they were to be governed 
when annexed to a self-governing people was a problem not easily 
solved- that in time of war the island would have been the first ob- 
ject struck at bv an enemy, and would have required for its defense 
a great increase of our military and naval force; and that the finish- 
in- stroke to the treaty, already meeting with uo favor anywhere, 
was given by a contemporaneous earthquake and tidal wave. He 
adds- '' The reason why the Senate did not act promptly on the 
treaty but allowed it to die on its hands, was a desire, if possible, 
to save the liberal ministry of Denmark, which had been drawn 
into that measure, against the natural effect of its rejection. • 

Mr Harlan in his letter concurs with his associates m the 
opinion that " as a mere commercial transaction the proposed 
purchase at the price named would have beeu a great folly ;" that 
- as a naval depot and coaling station St. Thomas would be of 
doubtful value to the United States ;" and - as it did not appear 
to the committee to be specially desirable as a military station, 
they decided unanimously, I think, not to recommend the ratifi- 
cation of the treaty." As to the charge of unjustifiable delay on 
the part of the committee he writes, " In this case the committee 
were not, I think, dilatory. Ample but only necessary time was 
taken to make the necessary investigations and inquiries, and tor 
the interchange of views ; and when they decided not to recom- 
mend the ratification it was thought that it would seem less harsh 
towards the other power to permit the time for exchanging rati- 
fications to expire than to formally reject the proposed cession. 
In relation to the inquiry as to whether the chairman, Mr. Sum- 
ner, acted fairlv in the transaction, Mr. Harlan adds, " None^;^o 
ever knew Mr. Sumner could have any doubt on that point. He 



18 

was the soul of candor and frankness. And if he had been dis- 
posed to act otherwise in the case referred to, he could not have 
trifled with the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs as tlien 
constituted." It is perhaps worthy of observation that the Senate 
appears to have unanimously acquiesced in the views of the com- 
mittee. 

Such is the true version of the " diplomatic episode," or rather 
of the diplomatic fiasco, and a final question may be asked : If the 
acquisition of St. Thomas was so manifestly desirable as Miss 
Seward represents, how does it happen that no one at Washington 
or among the people during the twenty years since Mr. Seward left 
office has said a word to revive the scheme ? A good thing does 
not die so easily. There wnll always be true men and wise men 
to appreciate what is of enduring value. We have since had six 
Presidents, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland and Har-. 
rison, and, not counting Washburne, five Secretaries of State, 
Fish, Evarts, Blaine, Frelinghuysen and Bayard ; but none of them 
has coveted this island of the Caribbean Sea, rifted by earth- 
quakes, swept by cyclones, and submerged by tidal waves, the 
imagined centre of universal commerce and a necessary outpost for 
our national defense ! Journals and merchants have been alike 
silent. Foreign nations, who were suspected to be greedy specta- 
tors, have turned away from the prize. St. Thomas remains still 
a Danish spinster, as she has been for two hundred years, unwed- 
ded and unsought. One lone sigh over her continued isolation 
comes from the namesake of a statesman who saw visions of her 
fairness and her dowry hidden altogether from the eyes of his own 
and of this generation. 



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